Malpelo

The Malpelo Fauna and Flora Sanctuary was established in 1995 in the Pacific Ocean, some five hundred kilometres off the Colombian coast, and protects some 8,570 km² around the island of the same name and its islets. UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage List in 2006.

Malpelo is the emergent summit of a volcanic submarine range: a steep, barren rock with no fresh water, barely a few square kilometres in extent, inhabited only by a Colombian military garrison. Its vegetation is minimal, reduced to lichens, algae and ferns, and its cliffs hold one of the largest Nazca booby colonies in the world.

Its value lies underwater. The island rises from great depths and its vertical walls, swept by nutrient-rich currents, draw extraordinary concentrations of large pelagics: schools of hundreds of hammerhead sharks, silky sharks, whale shark and the rare deep-water smalltooth sand tiger, as well as manta rays and tuna. It is one of the largest no-take zones in the eastern tropical Pacific and works as a refuge and a restocking ground for the whole region, in connection with the Galápagos, Cocos and Coiba. Illegal longline fishing, especially for shark finning, is its main threat.